About

Question Bridge Interactive

$77,676

pledged of $68,000 goal

616

backers

What is Question Bridge Interactive?

Meet the new questionbridge.com - a responsive design platform created to facilitate a healing dialogue within a demographic. When finished, our website will use 21st century technology and social media culture to
expose the true complexity, diversity and humanity of an identity group.

QB Interactive Suite

Mock up of Question View

By leveraging over 1600 videos collected
for the original video installation, Question Bridge Interactive creates a
space for exploring specific conversations about black male identity and making
new discoveries in the process. Through simple site navigations visitors can
filter the conversations by:

Universal
themes

Adjectives
participants tagged to describe themselves

Location
of participants

Age of
participants

Date that
videos and themes were added

The
site’s initial focus is arguably one of the most opaque demographics in America,
Black Males. Through the power of questions and answers, myriads of stories and
characters will be set free to break the stereotypes of black-male-ness and
explore remedies for long ingrained issues caused by this estrangement. In the
future we hope to expand the focus to other identity groups.

How will Question Bridge Interactive work?

Visitors to the site will be able to cross-reference data in real-time, pulling from the wealth of archived content as well as on-the-fly uploads from other site visitors.

The more uploads to the interactive experience, the richer the search results become. The site is built to expand with the content including features such as:

Statistics View – Select various keywords and categories to discover a specific statistic from the site content.
For example: Filtering content by family, community, educated, and spiritual could yield a fact from the project like:

"12% of Question Bridge black males who have discussed family and community identify as educated and spiritual."

Mock Up of Statistics View

Or, a filter by relationships, identity, ambitions, intelligent, and New York may yield a project fact: "30% of Question Bridge black males who have discussed relationships, identity, and ambition identify as intelligent and father and are in New York or Chicago.

Mock Up Statistics View

Map View – Toggle seamlessly to Map View and see how participants are distributed across the U.S., filtered by search terms

Mock up of Map View

Time Cloud View - Select keywords to see how the popularity of different topics have trended over time

Predictive Search - Type anywhere in the experience to bring up a predictive-text search and quick guide to specific content

Question View - Browse featured conversations on the site

Mock up of Question View

Profile View - Select a participant's name at any point during the experience to view his profile

Gain perspective by listening in on these conversations, or crunch numbers with the data. Question Bridge Interactive is designed to help everyone- from academics to the casual web-surfer learn more about what it means to be a black male in America today.

Why are we doing this?

Question Bridge: Black Males is uniquely effective at shattering monochromatic stereotypes associated with Black males, so both participants and witnesses are freed to recognize each Black man as an individual with limitless potential.

Individual Black men have agency to express themselves, which releases them from the constraints of stereotypes and its related low expectations. Witnesses are able to break from static perspectives about identity and adopt new filters for processing the bombardment of narrow and often inaccurate media-generated images of Black men.

We hope to help in a paradigm shift in American consciousness around Black male identity that removes critical obstacles limiting their political, social, and economic advancement.

“Question Bridge: Black Males started out as an art project and is quickly becoming a movement.” —Jesse Williams, Executive Producer

What is Question Bridge: Black Males?

Question Bridge: Black Males is an innovative transmedia art project that facilitates a dialogue between a critical mass of Black men from diverse and contending backgrounds; and creates a platform for them to represent and redefine Black male identity in America.

So far, the project has existed as a video art installation showcasing footage from over 160 men from 12 cities, with robust community engagement programming and a high school curriculum. Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012, the project has traveled to more than 16 cities and impacted the perspective of hundreds of thousands of people on the reality of Black men.

This year we're expanding our reach by building this interactive platform. We'll be launching a national digital campaign to impact the perspective of millions!

Origins- About The Art Installation

Artists Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith, and Kamal Sinclair traveled the country for four years, collecting over 1,600 question and answer videos from over 160 men. On video, a black man asked a significant question of another black man they felt estranged from; on video, a black man representing that difference recorded an answer. The artists molded this rich content into an insightful, provocative and entertaining five-channel video installation—a portal into an inner realm of black male consciousness. It premiered at 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, and over 10 other national museums, festivals, and cultural institutions.

Risks and challenges

Question Bridge is built and run by a team of artists and art and technology professionals who’ve executed 2012’s transmedia installation, and countless other media and art related projects. Our expertise, network and proven track record gives us full confidence in our ability to execute the expansion of the interactive online platform. We tested the relevance of these platforms in 2012 with a beta version of the app. So we’ve incorporated the lessons learned, and strengthened our vision and our team- we are so excited to launch this site and realize goals.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge US$ 25 or more
About US$ 25

Not only will we give you some facebook kudos, but we’ll even make sure everyone who visits the QB website knows you were a contributor! We’ll forever have you acknowledged on our site and we’ll even send you a special, limited edition Question Bridge art postcard.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge US$ 100 or more
About US$ 100

You will receive a very cool and high quality tote bag that features the artwork of Hank Willis Thomas. The tote has a silkscreen of "A Place to Call Home: Africa-America. You'll also receive the QB Catalyst Package.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge US$ 2,000 or more
About US$ 2,000

Build your art collection! You can own an edition of a print of "Of Time, Space, and Revolution" by Hank Willis Thomas. This Chromogenic print is available in an edition of 15, at 30 x 15 inches and is unframed. You'll also receive the QB Catalyst Package. See FAQs for more info.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge US$ 25 or more
About US$ 25

Father's Day Special! Why not contribute to Question Bridge Interactive in your father's name? If you contribute anything over $25.00 between today and Sunday, we'll send you a digital certificate that you can share with your father, or whoever you are honoring this weekend. You can also post it on Facebook or Twitter, with #QuestionBridgeFathers